


The Faces We Put Forth

by coffeeincluded



Series: The Beasts Within [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Feels, Daemon Settling, Gen, Harm to Daemons, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21579799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeincluded/pseuds/coffeeincluded
Summary: Snapshots in the lives before Garreg Mach.Or: How the students of the Garreg Mach Class of 1180 settled.Chapter One: Bernadetta and MaleckiChapter Two: Ferdinand and EmbrienneChapter Three: Hubert and Thanily
Series: The Beasts Within [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543501
Comments: 37
Kudos: 91





	1. Bernadetta and Malecki

**Author's Note:**

> So because I have absolutely no self-control and my AU is metastasizing, here's a series on how each of the characters' daemons in my 3 Houses Daemon AU settled! Some of them will be sweet and wholesome, others will be horrible, but I hope you enjoy all of them!
> 
> Also, not joking, read the warnings in the authors' notes in each chapter. Especially the first one, since we're starting off with Bernadetta and Malecki.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta was always alone. It would be so much worse if she didn't have Malecki by her side. Maybe one day they could do something about Father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Bernadetta: My father's obsessed with money. He's only ever seen me as bait for a rich husband. To train me to be a good, submissive wife, he'd do things like tie me to a chair and leave me there all day, challenging me to stay quiet. I tried hard to do as he asked. Honestly, I did. But before I knew it, I just couldn't bring myself to leave my room anymore._
> 
> _Bernadetta and Byleth’s B support._
> 
> Content warnings: Bernadetta's father in general, deconstructing his attempts to marry off a young teenage girl to gross older men for a dowry and attempts at crest babies to their logical disgusting conclusion (don't worry; Bernadetta is fine, but it's certainly discussed), that fucking chair, panic attacks, and a moment of accidental self-harm during said panic attack.

The first time Bernadetta’s father tied her to that chair, Malecki turned into a beaver and chewed through the ropes. Her father was outside the room. It took seconds for his daemon, a snarling stout striped devil, to overpower Malecki and force them both to the floor.

The second time, he used chains. Malecki became a bear and tore the chair apart, but again could do nothing against her father’s vicious daemon. Mal was unsettled, could be anything, but he didn’t know how to fight in any form. Didn’t have the will to fight against Father.

The third time, the door was bolted. The guard outside had a jaguar daemon, and knew how to subdue Bernadetta without leaving a bruise.

By the sixth time Bernadetta stopped trying to escape. She couldn’t get free, and there was always somebody outside. Any attempts would be met with hands forcing her into compliance, or another daemon biting and beating Mal into submission while he struggled and she sobbed from the pain inflicted on her Mal, on her heart and soul.

So instead Mal flattened himself against her body, a gecko under her shirt, just above where the chains pressed against the last of her ribs. Bernadetta tried to obey her father, tried to be a good daughter. She really did. But it was just the two of them in that cold dark room, three times a week, every week. And so they screamed and screamed.

* * *

  
Bernadetta had been trained to be a good submissive wife in one way or another for as long as she could remember. Her father wanted money. And she had a crest.

Stand here. Walk there. Curtsy like this. Smile like that. Here is how you speak to your husband. Here is how you fulfill his every desire, how to guess the unspoken ones. Here is how your daemon takes a proper form. Here is how you smile down everything you truly want and feel. Here is how you never associate yourself with commoner scum. Here is how you do not discuss such disgusting unwifely things like murder mysteries and carnivorous plants. Here is a more ladylike hobby, Bernadetta!

Soon, she didn’t even want to be outside. She was happiest alone, with Mal and her secret hobbies. In her room nobody could yell at her. Nobody could hurt her. And she couldn’t hurt anybody else.

And then Bernadetta began her monthly cycles, and her body began to change, and even though Malecki was still unsettled her father doubled his efforts to marry her off. And the Wife Lessons began to take on a different tone.

There was the exam with the doctor, painful and uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t fully articulate as his gloved fingers examined every last inch of her. There were the talks about “wifely duties,” things spoken about obliquely, their hints and shadows making a girl staring down puberty squirmy and tingly in a not-unpleasant way.

Or at least, they would, if the potential suitors didn’t make those feelings shrivel up into disgust and terror. They were almost all older men, at least twice her age, and by this point she had learned enough about the expected “wifely duties,” to realize they just wanted to use her to make as many crest babies as possible, and satisfy their own squirmy tingly feelings. And that made her want to run into her room, hide under the covers with Mal, and never ever leave. She’d always wanted to see what Mal would settle as, but if growing up meant her body would change too, meant she’d have to do these things (and nobody would give her a clear description, which made no sense! Why wouldn’t they want her to know what she’d have to do to be a good submissive wife?), then she wanted to be a child forever.

There was one potential suitor who didn’t seem so bad. Bernadetta couldn’t remember his name, or his daemon’s, but she saw his drawing. He looked to be about her age, his daemon still unsettled but a meerkat in the image, with a chubby face and wavy orange hair. He looked kinda cute actually. But he was probably the same as the rest of the other suitors on the inside. Bernadetta was relieved and just a little bit disappointed when he turned down the proposal. Same with the other two potential suitors around her age; one a yawning boy with lank green hair, his unsettled daemon a koala. The other a surly-looking boy with greasy black hair, a pimply face, and another unsettled daemon who decided to be a freaking _vulture_ for some reason. But by this point Bernie couldn't trust anyone, not even people around her age. They were probably just as awful on the inside as those gross old men who her father wanted her to marry.

And then there was that damn chair.

* * *

  
Months, years of attempts to marry Bernadetta off, secure a large dowry in exchange for the crest-bearing guaranteed virgin daughter of Count Varley, and all of her father’s efforts had failed. Because she wasn’t sweet and submissive enough. Because she didn’t want to leave her room. Because she had things she wanted to do on her own, her own interests, not just an empty vessel, a shadow reflecting whatever her future husband would want her to do and say and be. Because she said no too much.

One time, she had been forced to dine with her father and another potential suitor. The suitor was unimpressed, if not a little worried, and left quickly. Afterwards, her father had yelled at her for hours about how she was worthless, ugly, didn’t even try to look presentable. How she put him off with her interests (she just talked about gardening! He asked her about what she likes to garden!). How she was a waste of a daughter.

His daemon had pinned Mal to the floor, sunk her teeth into his neck, snarled in his ear how he was too clingy to Bernie. How he made her too willful, too defiant.

How she wished there was a way to take him away from Bernie, make them nice and peaceful and compliant and obedient and nothing else.

Bernadetta and Malecki spent that entire night holding each other. She clutched Malecki’s form as he curled up in her arms, both trembling in terror at the threat her father had uttered. Was it even possible to tear him away from her? They were part of the same being after all; if he took Mal away, then what would be left? But just the thought, just the fact that her father would threaten such a horrible thing...

“They’ll never take me away from you,” Mal whispered. “I won’t let him.”

Count Varley didn’t take Mal away from Bernie. But he did take her down to a tiny room in the cellar, tied her to a chair, and left her there for hours, challenging her to stay quiet.

Bernadetta tried. She really did. But she was alone with Mal in the dark and the cold and the ropes rubbed against her skin and the chains hurt even more. And every time she tried to escape they would hurt her, or Mal, or both.

So Bernadetta would scream, and cry, and beg. But nobody came. Not even when she was hungry, or thirsty, or had to use the bathroom. Not even after, when her body surrendered to biology and her shame stained the chair and ran down her legs.

Nobody ever came. Not until the allotted time. Not even when her screams faded to begs, faded to whimpers and finally to silence.

It wasn’t working. She still wasn’t the good submissive young woman her father wanted her to be. She hated him as much as she feared him, and hated that she hated him. It wasn’t ladylike. And didn’t he just want her to be a good wife? She just wanted to make him proud.

“I don’t know if he ever will be though,” Mal whimpered. He was a black bear this time, but even that wasn’t enough to fend off the striped devil daemon always at her father’s side. The fight just wasn’t in him. “I’m tired Bernie. I’m just so tired.”

“...I’m tired too.” Tired of the verbal abuse, the hours in the chair. Tired of not being able to talk to people, of not being able to live on her own terms. Tired of never being good enough. She was so tired.

* * *

  
But even though Bernadetta was tired, the proposal attempts just kept coming. Until, at the umpteenth dance, the umpteenth attempt to force Bernie and Mal out of her room where she was safe, where she could sew her pitcher plant dolls and write her stories and sing and be alone and in peace, out of that refuge into loud noises and probing hands and sneering smiles and too many questions and too many insults and too many people. It was then that something broke in her.

“No! NO! I’m not going! You can’t make me go!”

She kicked and screamed and clawed and bit. She thrashed and howled like a caged beast instead of the sixteen year old young woman she was. Distantly, floating above, some part of her screamed at her to stop, to be a proper lady for once in her useless life. But she wasn’t listening, couldn’t listen.

Her father was dragging her out of her room where it was safe and she could live and into a where there were going to be people trying to marry her and she was useless worthless unmarriageable—and even if she was married she was only worth her crest and her womb which meant that even if she did get married her fate would be to endure... _that_...night after night after night after night until she pumped out enough crest babies for her husband to be satisfied after which he would dispose of her and her Mal because she was stupid useless worthless Bernie “I’M NOT GOING YOU CAN’T MAKE ME GO!!!”

Fat fingers dug into her arms hard enough to bruise; her father dragged her towards the door as he hurled insult after insult. “You are going to the ball, you pathetic excuse for a daughter! You are going to the ball, and you are going to dress as a proper lady, and you are—“

His voice fuzzed out into incomprehensible screaming. The world fuzzed out, and her heart hammered in her chest, thundered all the way up to her ears, and the world shrank to her father’s fingers clenching her arm, and Mal. Mal desperately trying to escape, blind panic overriding the growing ache of his distance. A sharper pain as that striped devil daemon sank her fangs into Mal, dragging him inch by inch out of the room. Malecki’s flailing as he shifted, flickering from one form to another in the blink of an eye, bear-snake-bobcat-raven—

_—hedgehog—_

The striped devil screeched as the spikes pierced her mouth. She spat out Mal, and at the same time Count Varley doubled over in pain and, just for a moment, slackened his grip. That was enough for Bernie to wrench herself free and stumble away. She needed to _Mal_ she needed to _flee_ she needed to _window—_

_—fists pounding against the window, a crack—_

_—a flash of light, her crest granting another burst of speed—_

_—another crack, the crash of shattering glass—_

_—wet, dripping, red? Blooming pain, screaming..._

Pain sliced through the panic, and the screaming that was now a different tone. The window was broken. Shards of glass were on the floor. Blood dripped onto the floor.

Bernadetta looked down. At the deep gashes in her hand and arm. At the blood welling up from around the embedded glass shards that flowed down her arm and dripped from her elbow to the floor. There was a lot of blood.

 _I can’t go to the ball like this,_ was her last conscious thought, equal parts horror and blessed relief, before she passed out.

* * *

  
Darkness. A soft bed. Her bed—she could feel Mr. McSnorkles’s plush head under her shoulder. An itchy deep ache in her right arm. Soft cotton.

Bernie woke slowly, senses flickering back one by one. She had the same scooped-out feeing that she had immediately after every panic panic attack. So it couldn’t have been more than a few hours...right?

She tried to roll over, and, “Ow! Ow, owowowow...” She looked down at her arm for the first time.

Soft cotton bandages covered her right arm from the elbow all the way down to the fingertips. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel the stitches pulling at her hand and arm.

“...Oh.”

The soft smoothness of Mal’s nose against her thigh. “At...at least we don’t have to worry about the ball anymore?” He pressed against her, his spines pricking against her unbandaged arm.

Wait. Spines?

Malecki stared up at her, his eyes full of concern and love. He was still a hedgehog.

“Mal, can you...be a puppy or something?” She needed to hold him, to feel his soft and fluffy and warm against her.

Mal climbed into her lap. He nestled up against her. His body was soft and warm. But he was still a hedgehog. “No,” he said, a paw against her bandaged hand as he looked into her eyes. “I don’t want to.”

Did...did that mean...? Bernadetta scooped up Malecki with her free hand, raised him level to her eyes, really looked at him. His little paws with little claws, his soft underbelly, his hundreds of pointy spines. “Really Mal? Hedgehog? Are you sure?”

A fervent nod. “Bernie, did you see what happened with Father’s daemon? She couldn’t grab me when I curled up! She spat me out!”

He was right. Father’s daemon couldn’t touch Malecki. Not when he was curled up. “Mal...”

Mal pressed his nose against Bernie’s. His paws were warm and soft on her face. “It doesn’t matter what they do; I can always hide beside you. If I’m a hedgehog, nobody can ever touch me or split us apart again.”

There was no chair for several weeks, not until the bandages came off and the stitches came out and the scars failed from an angry red to a faint raised pink. And when her mother came home, weeks later, she brought Bernie a sundew plant, and her favorite cake.

That was all the settling celebration she and Mal received. But they still had each other. And as long as he curled up, nobody could ever touch Malecki again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Bernadetta: When I mess up or even when it's just a bad day, it's hard for me to step outside. I'm too scared. But the next day, I try again...because I know that one mistake doesn't ruin everything._  
>    
>  _Bernadetta and Ferdinand’s B support._
> 
> Yeah...this one started off with a bang. I swear to god, the next one is wholesome and sweet! It's Ferdinand and Embrienne!
> 
> Count Varley's daemon is a female Tasmanian Devil, called a striped devil in this setting.


	2. Ferdinand and Embrienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, and he would be the greatest prime minister the Adrestian Empire would ever see.
> 
> Well, once he learns what it actually means to be the noblest of nobles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Dorothea: Well, let me see. A good clue... I know! It's because you're like a bee. That oughta be enough of a clue. So long, Ferdie._  
>  _Ferdinand: A bee? I haven't the slightest... perhaps because I am such a diligent worker?_  
>    
> _—Ferdinand and Dorothea’s C support_
> 
> Thank you all for being so patient! I am in the middle of interview hell so I’ve been plucking away at this when I can. The next update to the main story is fully drafted and I’ll be working on it as much as I can; it will be updated as soon as it’s done. With that, enjoy! Ferdinand is such a good boy who has grown on me to a surprising extent.
> 
> No warnings here today. Ferdinand’s father is a corrupt asshole who holds nothing but contempt for those he views as beneath him, but he genuinely adores his family. Ferdinand von Aegir grew up in a home full of warmth and love.

He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, and he would be the greatest prime minister the Adrestian Empire would ever see.

But that was a long way off. For now, he was a little boy, standing in the shadow of his father at the royal palace. He watched with bright amber eyes as his father paced back and forth before the other ministers, his prairie dog daemon trotting across the mahogany table in step with him. Every word was uttered with confidence and certainty, whether it was about tax policy or delegating administrative duties for the emperor. He was a force to behold.

Ferdinand wanted to be that confident. He wanted to be that confident so badly that it hurt. But when people addressed him he would still more often than not blush and stammer his name, his beautiful clothes suddenly stiff and itchy as he leaned on Embry for support. It was scary, talking to so many people at once and trying to convince them of your dreams!

But he could do it, he told himself in that lovely silver mirror, repeating the words his parents so often told him as he braided Embry’s mane. He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, the next in line to be prime minister. He was born for this job! But being born for it wasn’t enough. He needed to work, to study, to train to be the very best!

“We can do this,” Embrienne said, pressing her soft pony nose against the palm of his hand. “Tomorrow when Mother and Father go speak at the council we will introduce ourselves, and we will listen, and we will take notes, and we will do an amazing job!”

“Yeah!” He posed in front of the mirror, looked at himself with his bright orange locks and pudgy arms and perfectly tailored clothes, at Embry with her sandy mane braided with flowing ribbons. “We’ve got this.”

The next day, his father stood to the side and watched as Ferdinand introduced himself to the other ministers, and Marquis Vestra’s menacing son, and the two oldest Hresvelgs (the only two to have settled; the prince with his lynx and the princess with her yellow snake).

“I...I am Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir!” He shouted, his hand laced in Embry’s mane.

He barely hesitated, and everyone smiled and introduced themselves. And afterwords, Crown Prince Martin von Hresvelg himself congratulated Ferdinand, said that he would make a wonderful prime minister one day.

“I’m looking forward to working alongside you once I become Emperor,” he had said, his daemon acknowledging Embrienne’s bow. “Together, we will be a formidable team.”

Ferdinand beamed with pride, and the glow keep him warm all the way home.

* * *

  
He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, and even at the age of ten he enjoyed the finer things in life.

He loved tea, especially Seiros tea and imported Almyran pine needle tea which was really hard to get, even for a von Aegir. He loved horseback riding, and would spend far too long in the stables watching the grooms care for the Aegir horses and helping out as much as he could (the groomsmen liked him; they would let him hang out on breaks and sit on bales of hay and chat over bread, although they always seemed to censor themselves around him).

But most of all, he loved the opera. He adored the spectacle, the red and gold velvet, the props, the beautiful music. He loved sitting in the special boxes reserved for the prime minister and his family, Embrienne on his lap as a prairie dog just like his father’s Koraliss, leaning forward in the oversized plush seat to see as much as he could. The Mittelfrank Opera Company went all out. One time they even had horses on stage during a scene with a military parade! Real ones too, not costumed horse or zebra or antelope daemons. And Manuela Casagrande had a voice to woo the Saints themselves! The arias she and her daemon Puccini sang never failed to bring a tear to his eye. The ring-tailed lemur was also a master of costume, able to pull off the appearance of almost any daemon their role demanded with aplomb. Truly, he could never hope to hear a voice like hers, or anybody’s, outside those opera house walls!

Which was why the girl in the fountain left him so utterly dumbstruck.

No, saying “the girl in the fountain” did not do the sight before him justice. She was about his age, stripped down to her ragged small clothes. The droplets of water shone on her skin like diamonds; her dark hair, wet from the fountain, clung to her bony frame like melted chocolate. Her daemon stood in the fountain beside her, a lion with a luxurious black mane, standing guard as she bathed. But they sang together as she bathed, and their voice—!

_“And though I am gone,_  
_Just ash in the wind,_  
_One life surrendered_  
_So yours can begin,_  
_Courage my children_  
_This is your song,_  
_I am the earth_  
_I will make you strong!”_

He knew that song, knew every word, every note. _The Earth Mother’s Aria_ , alternatively titled _The Heritors of Arcadia_ , from the Mittelfrank Opera Company’s new smash hit _Shadows of Valentia_. It was a thrilling aria, one that always brought a stirring to his heart.

But he had never heard it sung like this. Sung by a single young girl and her daemon, no accompaniment besides the splashing of water. Their voices high and tremulous with youth, untrained but strong and so, so sweet. It was ethereal. She was ethereal. She had him completely under her spell.

She had stopped singing and was staring right at him.

Ferdinand froze, instantly stripped bare and exposed. Embrienne instantly turned into a moth and fluttered to hide behind his shoulders. He felt flushed, ashamed, like he had been caught peeping in on somebody taking a shower, which...Cethleann’s grace, he kind of was.

What kind of sick gross...sicko was he? Her eyes burned into his, a nymph, an ethereal fey creature...a girl with tattered smallclothes, who probably bathed in the fountain because she could not afford the bathhouses.

Ferdinand squeaked, and ran away. And when he came back later—to see if she was real or mirage, to apologize, he was not quite sure—she was gone.

“Father?”

“Yes Ferdinand?”

“There are a lot of poor and homeless people in Enbarr, are there not?” They had just walked past a similar encampment, in fact. There were at least a dozen people there, as dirty and ragged as their daemons were keen-eyed and clean. One of them had approached his father, maybe to beg for money, maybe to spit in his face. His father’s guard had broken the woman’s fingers without even looking down. “Is there anything we can do to help them learn to save money better, or get jobs?”

His father slowed his steps, let out a sigh. “Son,” he said, “what are the duties of a noble?”

“To protect the Empire and promote the growth and prosperity of our territory. And to protect the commoners, but Father does that not mean—“

“And what are the duties of commoners?”

“To, to perform their tasks with diligence, to treat us with the respect we are owed, and to repay our protection and benevolence in the form of taxation?”

His father nodded. “Precisely, my son. The unfortunate truth is that many commoners are ungrateful of their role in life. They are wastrels, given to drink and slovenly vice, and forsake the role the goddess has granted them. And so the goddess has forsaken them in turn. Their state is the natural consequence of their laziness. If they simply acquired the proper moral character and discipline, then good fortune would visit them once more.”

“...” His father’s sermon seemed reasonable—the von Aegirs remained prime ministers through continued dedication and service to the empire—but something about it did not sit right with him. Some of the people he saw begging and dressed in rags were young children, still unsettled just like Embry. How could they already be lazy and immoral enough for the goddess to condemn? And this year he had been old enough to participate in the fast days for the first time. And it was hard. By sundown all he and Embry could think about was roasted venison, baked apples, mousse-filled cakes, _food._ And if he, Ferdinand von Aegir, struggled to work on an empty stomach, then how much would a commoner struggle?

Embrienne became a painted wolf, nosed his hand with a whine. He...did not really think he should talk with his father about this. He and Embry needed to discuss this themselves., although he did not know if he would actually come to any answers.

But the Mittelfrank Opera Company was also known for its charity events. Sometimes they would sponsor promising untrained singers. And they often put on open-air shows for the general public to enjoy. His father decried them, said they were a disgrace to the dignity of opera. But Ferdinand rather enjoyed the open-air theaters. There was a charm to them. And even commoners deserved to enjoy the fine arts every once in a while!

So the next time they went to the opera, and Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir sat entranced by the spectacle (and the new singer playing the role of a young girl with a bird of paradise daemon, her voice high and sweet and oddly familiar), he put all of the spare money in his wallet into the donation tins. When his father asked, he lied and said he had spent it all on chocolates, and only felt a little bit guilty. After all, it was his duty as a noble to ensure other people got the chance to enjoy the finer things in life as much as he did, even if only once in a while.

* * *

  
He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, for whatever that was worth. Disease cared nothing for names or class. Sure, a noble could afford personal healers, the most expensive medications, but that could only do so much.

It did not seem to do the royal family any good.

Ferdinand did not know all the details. His father had ordered him and his mother to remain at the Aegir estate while he remained in the capitol with most of the other ministers, probably to assist in administrative duties in place of the grieving emperor. The news coming out of the palace was limited, presumably to prevent a panic, but what Ferdinand heard was grim.

Every Hresvelg child, from Martin to Wulfhild, had taken ill, and there were no rumors of their improvement. Several other servants, many children, had also fallen ill. His father was truly brave to remain in the capitol, but Linhardt was not so sure.

“Isn’t it kind of odd, that none of our parents have gotten sick despite being so close to the emperor?” he mumbled, sprawled out in the grass of the Bergliez estate. Runilite flopped over his face, soaking in the summer sun. She was a full year younger than Embrienne and yet already settled. Ferdinand could not help but feel a pang of jealousy, how Linhardt already knew exactly who he was, through and through. He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, of course, but he did not always know what exactly that meant.

“Linhardt, what exactly do you mean by that?” But the young noble had already fallen asleep again. Honestly, how could he be so lackadaisical about, well, everything? He was an only child; the future of his territory and family rested on him! He needed to perform his noble duties, even if he did not wish to...

Embrienne placed her little meerkat paw over his hand. “I do not truly wish to get married yet either.” Though that was not quite true. He rather liked the idea of marriage, frequently found himself idly dreaming of of an opulent and romantic wedding to rival every opera he had ever seen, with flower petals dancing in the wind and his bride in a beautiful dress and not a dry eye in his fantasy. The problem was...

Runilite lifted her head and mumbled, “Say, Ferdinand, once you and this potential bride get married and you have children, can I examine them for crests?”

...That.

“Agglllkk! L-Linhardt!” he spluttered his protestations, how he was not planning to get married, how that was incredibly rude of him, and so forth. It was rude, and he...it stripped away the the romance of courtship, a wedding, the fluffy pinkness of it all. All that was left was strictly transactional—contracts and dowries and crest babies. All of which were important responsibilities of nobility, to be sure, but he was worth more than his crest and his name, was he not?

“Oh are you talking about Varley’s daughter?” Caspar piped up, Peakane a mountain goat beside him, head butting him. She had also shifted between just a few forms as of late and would likely settle quite soon. “Because man, that’s just asking for trouble. I’ve heard the freakiest stuff about her. Like, she never leaves her room, and makes these creepy curse dolls to use on people!”

“Y-you jest.” But Caspar did not jest. He was unfailingly earnest and honest, and many other things, in life.

“I’m not making it up! She’s totally some weird witchy hermit lady!”

Ferdinand and Embrienne did not say anything, just looked at each other. But that night, when he was having dinner with his mother, his mouth full of food, Embrienne blurted out, “Mother, I wish to decline the proposal!”

His mother looked up and blinked in surprise. "Ferdinand, what do you mean by that?"

"I mean exactly what I say; I wish to decline the proposal! I know I must marry a noble some day, but...not now." _I do not wish to marry an unknown girl who hides from the sun and makes curse dolls. I do not wish to marry when I am only fourteen and still unsettled. I do not wish to marry solely for the sake of my crest and my name! I want my marriage to mean something._

His mother's daemon looked at him, his eyes soft. "If you are absolutely sure, then I will write to Count Varley and withdraw the proposal."

Something unclenched in Ferdinand's gut and slipped away like ice in the sunlight. "Thank you, mother."

They stayed in the countryside for several months as, one by one, the Hresvelg children slipped away. By the time Ferdinand returned to Enbarr, Martin was gone. All the other heirs to the throne were gone. The only one left was Edelgard, a legitimized bastard of Emperor Ionius, a slip of a girl slightly younger than him with bone-white hair and trembling hands and Hubert her shadow with every step, her daemon a gyrfalcon whose eyes blazed like distant bonfires. 

She was not ready for the throne. His father had made that very clear, and Ferdinand agreed. This would be his purpose, to be the best prime minister possible, better than Edelgard. Adrestia would not suffer under an emperor as unprepared as her. This was to be his purpose, far more than a crest and a name. 

* * *

He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, and he was ready for this! His parents and tutors had taught him the fine art of estate management for years, and this was to be his final test of sorts. In front of him sat books and ledgers, all the details of harvests and villages, roads and taxations, _everything_ from Aegir territories for the past twenty years. And his job was to create this year’s agricultural survey. His job was to decide which farmers would plant which crops. When taxes would be collected, and how much to collect. Which roads would be repaired, which bridges would be built, which villages would get emergency protection from bandits. He was ready. He could do this.

”We have this, Embrienne!” She nodded, scampered off his shoulder to the pile of papers, pulled out the most recent ledger, and they got to work.

It was difficult work, mentally exhausting. More than once he would get up to pace around the study or just stare at the rolling hills of the Aegir estate for sometimes hours. These were to be his lands some day, his subjects. He needed to care for them, nurture the lands and the people on them so they could realize their fullest potential. It was one of his many duties as a noble. Which was why...

”Ferdinand.” Embrienne turned into a bee and settled on the bridge of his nose. Her fuzzy body tickled. “Something does not seem right.”

She was right, of course. They had perused these ledgers for days. He was _good_ at it, these little details of bureaucracy. He knew which villages could afford to pay higher taxes this year to compensate for those communities that were struggling. Which bridges needed reinforcement against the seasonal floods. Which communities needed additional protection against bandits. 

Where somebody was skimming off the top, diverting much needed funding from emergency disaster relief and road maintenance to topping off the von Aegir coffers. 

“Somebody must have tried to bribe their way into our favor,” he muttered, wanting so badly to believe that the fraud he saw before him, as despicable as it was, was simply the result of an individual’s attempt to curry favor and not...not...

Embrienne buzzed off his nose and landed next to those damning numbers. She was still a bee. “But Ferdinand, Father reviews all the financial records, approves all taxation and fund appropriations. He would have seen this discrepancy, and would have approved of it. Which means...he would have known...”

Ferdinand could barely bring himself to finish the thought, much less say it out loud. He was not a naive child anymore. He knew that his father engaged in less than honorable dealings, minor acts of corruption, that sort of thing. That he held an inappropriate and undeserved disdain for commoners. But to steal from the very people he was supposed to protect, to engage in fraud of this scale?!

Ferdinand stood up with a heavy scrape of the chair. He collected the drafts of his agricultural survey and the hard evidence of his father’s misdeeds and shoved them all into a folder. “We must confront him. If Father has truly strayed so far from the path of nobility then it is our duty to correct his course.”

Embrienne hovered in the air, and for a moment he thought she would protest, but instead she shuddered and said, “You are right.”

He thought she would become a lion as he made the long walk to his father’s study, or perhaps an eagle, something to grant them courage and strength. But instead she remained a bee, firm and resolute on the bridge of his nose.

”Father!” His knock echoed on the fine wood. “I have finished the agricultural survey!”

His father was quiet as he reviewed Ferdinand’s work. Koraliss occasionally pointed out a minor error, but made no major comments. At least, not until she got to that section. 

A silent look passed between his father and his daemon. Then Prime Minister von Aegir turned to Ferdinand von Aegir and asked, “Why are you allocating funds for a...a ‘traveling physician under escort’ to villages that are still paying the same amount in taxes from last year?”

Ferdinand brought a finger up to Embrienne’s fuzzy body, for she was still a bee. This was it, no going back. “I am providing these villages with what is rightfully theirs. If you look at the records of taxation versus what was actually collected and redistributed, there is a large discrepancy. And just a month later, a similar amount of money was added to our estate funds. Father, do you know anything about this potential error?” There, a possible way to save face, although he knew, and his father knew he knew. 

His father simply glared, and it was Koraliss who spoke. “Ferdinand, do you realize what you are saying?”

Embrienne flew down to hover in front of Koraliss’s face. “Considering that I just settled, I certainly hope so.”

The frost in the air shattered. Ferdinand knew, knew the moment they set on that long walk to his father’s office. But it was one thing to know it, and another thing entirely to say it. His father’s eyes went wide, and his daemon cupped Embry in her paws. “Honeybee, Embrienne?”

Embrienne flicked her antennae, her form of a nod from here on out. “If that survey was a test, then I suppose I passed.”

There was silence, and then his father burst into a radiant grin. “Ferdinand! My son! Look at you; you have become a young man right before my eyes!” He clapped his hands over Ferdinand’s. “When did you grow so tall?”

All fury at being uncovered was forgotten in his pure joy. The next days were a whirlwind of proclamations, feasts, celebrations in honor of Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir. 

He was proud and pleased, of course. As were his family, and all their subjects. But he also hoped that it was funded legitimately. And as he looked out at their territory he saw not just rolling hills and farmland, but the people toiling away on those fields, who needed and deserved doctors, education, protection, a chance to enjoy the fine arts, _more_ than the bare minimum they were getting. 

He was Ferdinand and Embrienne von Aegir, after all. He was the future prime minister of Adrestia. And that meant he had a responsibility to the empire, and most of all to the people within it. 

Even if it meant turning against his father some day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _An old paper with writings about harvesting and taxation. It probably belongs to a young noble who owns territory._
> 
> _—Agricultural survey, one of Ferdinand’s lost items._
> 
>   
> Ferdinand is such a good boy. He’s privileged and a bit of a snot, yes, but he is so genuinely enthusiastic, empathetic, and caring. Once you point out he has his head up his ass he pulls it out and strives to do better in the future. He helps establish free public education!
> 
> By the way this is the song that Dorothea was singing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZHcVMqXGhQ


	3. Hubert and Thanily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All this time, Lady Edelgard had been trapped beneath the palace. He was going to break her out of there, or die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Hubert: My family, House Vestra, has been sworn to House Hresvelg for generations. Since the dawn of the Empire, we have worked to protect the emperor by any means necessary--both in the open and in the shadows._  
>    
> _Hubert and Byleth’s C support._
> 
> And here’s even MORE content. Enjoy!
> 
> I had this in mind from the getgo—take a look at the first section of chapter 1 afterwards.
> 
> Content warning: Aftermath of torture, and a 15ish year old Hubert cutting a bloody path.

The guard was young, and she was bored. She clearly didn’t want to be here, but rather inside where the action was. Or maybe far away where she couldn’t hear any of the screams and sobs at all. Either way, she was young and bored and so paid no mind to the gangly youth in dark mage robes and a beaked raven mask fitted for a face that was similar to, but not quite, his. She waved the youth on and let him through.

“We should have killed her,” Thanily snarled, a tiny vampire bat concealed in his robes. Strike a blow against those who would dare harm the royal family, who would dare lay a finger on Lady Edelgard. Let them know the pain he felt, the pain they inflicted on so many innocents! How dare they?!

Hubert stopped, breathed deep, forced the roiling rage down, felt the sparks of wild rage-driven magic recede and climb back up his arm. “Thani, if we kill her, they’ll raise the alarm. Lady Edelgard and her siblings first. Then vengeance.”

Thani nodded against his shoulder. Hubert took a deep breath. Steady the hand, steady the mind. He was Hubert von Vestra, and a von Vestra protected the Emperor—always had, and always would. He would...oh Flames, this was stupid. Lady Edelgard and her siblings were in danger. Why was he reciting stupid mantras to himself?

Hubert took off running, deeper into the bowels of the palace.

* * *

His life was not his own. That was one of the first lessons that Lord Vestra drilled into Hubert, even before teaching him how to play chess. He was a von Vestra, born to serve the Emperors like his parents and their parents and all his relatives before him.

Lady Edelgard was the closest crested Hresvelg child in age to him, and so it was that he was introduced to her the day after his sixth birthday. The memory of that day would eventually fade away, but what would burn into him was one day several months later where she fell from a tree and broke her arm.

He should have followed Lady Edelgard up the tree, and to be fair Thanily did—she had transformed into a crow and followed her up to the very edge of their range—but the moment he was more than a couple of feet off the ground panic shot through him and he needed to scramble down to safety. It was a reflex as unnegotiable as breathing. But because Hubert was on the ground, he was unable to keep Lady Edelgard from crawling after Avarine on a branch far too slim to support her weight.

“You are Lady Edelgard’s servant!” his father had lectured. Hubert stared at his shoes, his face burning with shame. Thanily cowered next to him, mouse-shaped and enduring a similar dressing-down from his father’s octopus daemon. “You must protect her with her life!”

Duty came then. Devotion came later. Devotion came when they were being tutored, and Lady Edelgard fell asleep mid-lesson. That would not do, but it would also not do to discipline the princess. And so the tutor laid his switch on Hubert’s bare back instead.

The purpose of the whipping boy was to teach the royal child to behave by punishing someone close to them before their eyes in their stead. Edelgard’s eyes went wide with the first crack of the switch. They narrowed on the second. On the third, Avarine shot forward, a ferocious hyena, snatched the switch right out of his hand, and crushed it between her jaws.

“How dare you punish Hubert for something he didn’t even do!” she had shouted, and although she was six years old and less than four feet tall, she was every inch the emperor she would one day grow to be.

“It’s, it’s mean to punish me by hurting you!” Edelgard had said afterwards, Avarine flying back and forth with every shout. “It’s not right, and it’s not fair! Nobody should have to be hurt for somebody else!”

Hubert felt something bloom within him at those words. Lady Edelgard was honest and true, with an arrow-straight view of justice, fairness, and equality. He and Thanily (a jackal pup) nodded as he was filled with an emotion that he would only later recognize was devotion and love.

* * *

The underground chambers smelled of antiseptic and ozone, but that did little more than paint over the underlying stink of piss and shit and blood and fear.

What the fuck was going on down here? Hubert had been to the dungeons below the palace before, but never this deep. And the laboratory furnishings looked new, all sleek shiny metal entirely out of place with the dank atmosphere and damp stone.

There was one large room in particular that made Thanily want to dive beneath his robes, made the soft parts of Hubert that had not yet been honed into a Vestra want to run away.

The centerpiece of the room was a large shiny metal table with several lights hanging over it. Next to it, lying reverently on a cloth, were what appeared to be either surgical instruments or implements of torture.

“Probably both,” Thanily said as she stared at the anatomical diagrams and drawings of Crests and Crest Stones and Dust spread out over several tables. At bags of blood—presumably blood, some of it was _green_ —in a magically-chilled box.

At two sturdy cages, each large enough to hold a human or a daemon, placed next to each other. There were wires connecting these cages to strange contraptions that reminded him slightly of intricate clockworks, but much more sinister. And a sharp blade hanging above them, between the two, like a guillotine.

This place felt sterile, shiny clean, like every bit of violence had been carefully scrubbed away between uses. Most of it, at least. The floor sloped gently to a drain in the center. Hubert touched his hand to the drain, and it came away slightly sticky. Thanily flew back to Hubert, shivering. “We’ve got to find Lady Edelgard and get her out of here.”

“Agreed, but we also need to figure out what they’re doing down here.”

Thanily landed on the stand, spread her wings over the instruments. “Whatever it is, it’s not good. Something with blood, and Crests? And daemons are involved somehow?”

They left that room, but not before stealing a primer to dark magic and as many of the papers as they were fairly certain would not be missed.

* * *

When Lady Edelgard was stolen away, she might as well have taken all of Hubert’s limbs with him No, worse. Losing her was such a shock, it was as if Thanily herself was snatched away with her.

“Sure that’s not a little bit of overkill?” she muttered as she helped Hubert fling his clothes, a comb, and some rations into a rucksack.

“No.” He slung the sack over his back and sprinted out the door, his bed still unmade. Thanily shifted to a horse, he slung himself over her back, and they galloped full-speed out of the palace, out of city.

Hubert and Thanily ran, and ran, out of Enbarr as the city faded away into villages, then countryside, then forbidding forests where a ten year old boy and his daemon had no business dwelling. He ran, and he ran north. North was Fhirdiad, where he had overheard one of the guards say that she was taken. Fhirdiad was part of Faerghus. It was cold there. Would Lady Edelgard be okay? She must be freezing up there! What would she do without his fire magic to keep him warm? Why did Lord Arundel take her away?

“I don’t know, but we need to get her back!”

On the second day, Hubert was attacked by a wounded boar whose tusks were still sharp. He flung a fireball at it, but that only served to anger the beast and mildly slow it. He scrambled up the tree, Thanily a vulture perched on a branch beside him, crying in fear and pain as the boar rammed into the tree over and over again.

“Hubert, do something!”

“I can’t cast, I need both hands to cast get me down get me down!” He was up the tree, he was at least twenty feet off the ground, he was _in the air,_ the tree was _shaking_ , he was going to _fall_ and break his legs and then the boar would gore him and he was gonna die in this forest and get eaten by wolves and he’d never find Lady Edelgard!

Thanily, wings shaking, plummeted to the ground, changing to a grizzly bear at the last minute. Hubert cringed and buried his face into the bark at the sounds of battle, dug his fingers into the rough bark hard enough to scrape and bleed at every time the boar wounded Thani.

But eventually Thanily was victorious. She slid off the boar’s steaming corpse, torn and limping herself. It took even longer for Hubert to make his way down from the tree, but at least he ate well that night.

The third day, the forest had begun to clear out when they heard the sound of hoofbeats behind him. Hubert fought like a man possessed, slinging fireballs that split open the scabs on his hands as Thanily tried to knock one of the Vestra guards off of his zebra daemon. But he was only ten, and he was injured, and there were six of them.

He kicked and flailed in the arms of the biggest guard, snarled and bit at whomever tried to approach. “No! NO! Let me go! I need to get to Fhirdiad! I need to find Lady Edelgard!” It took three guards to pin him down and tie his hands behind his back, and four daemons to completely subdue Thanily.

He screamed for Lady Edelgard the whole way back, until they gagged him into silence.

* * *

He found her. After years and _years_ of searching, he finally found Lady Edelgard. And oh, what a cruel trick of an undoubtedly hateful goddess. Under the palace the entire time, and as he searched everywhere, she…

“Lady Edelgard, what did they do to you?!”

The princess, his friend, his master, his world, was chained in a filthy dungeon. Manacles, rusty and chafing her wrists and ankles to the point of leaving raised scars, bound her to the far wall. She was thin, her clothes matted. Her hair was chopped short and growing in white. The place smelled of blood and rat shit and worse.

Avarine was a snarling hyena in a cage next to her. She lept for Hubert at the sight of him, but the moment her body made contact with the strange metal there was a resounding crack and she was flung back with a cry of pain.

“Hubert! What are you doing here?!” Lady Edelgard scrambled for the doors, but the chains pulled her taut barely a foot from the bars. So close, and yet neither she nor Avarine could close the gap.

“Breaking you out. What do you think I’m doing?” Oh, he wanted to look up, wanted to see those lilac eyes whose fire still burned so bright. But he needed to pick this lock even more.

Thanily turned to a dusty moth and slipped through the bars, got as close to Avarine as she could. “We’ll find some way to get you out of here too; we won’t leave you behind!”

Lady Edelgard drew back, her eyes wide. “Hubert, no,” she hissed. “Go, get out of here, now! The guards will be making their rounds soon and if they find you they’ll take you captive too!”

“Preposterous. I will not leave you. And I will not leave your siblings either. Where are they?” There were other cells in this block, but they were all empty. Empty of people, at any rate. There were still manacles and daemon-cages in at least three cells. And the smell of blood.

Lady Edelgard shook her head. “My captors are getting more careful. I’ll survive.” _That wasn’t an answer. Flames, that wasn’t an answer._ “But Hubert, you need to leave, _now._ You are expendable; I am not!”

“Thanily,” Avarine said, curled up in the middle of the cage to avoid touching any of the bars, “If you do not leave, they will capture you, and they will—” She broke off with a horrified shudder.

“They’ll what?” What would they do with him and Thanily? What had they already done to Lady Edelgard and Avarine, to the rest of the royal family?!

But Lady Edelgard wasn’t talking anymore. “Hubert if I tell you then you won’t leave. I’ll tell you what they’re doing and what they’ve done when I get out of here, _I promise_. But you have to go so you can live for me to tell you!”

“Lady Edelgard, I—”

“Do you need an order? Then this is an order. _GO!”_

A long pause, and then Thanily flew through the bars and made her way back to Hubert’s side. “…You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

She smiled, at that, a faint flicker of the Edelgard of the surface world and his memories. “And you’re the most foolish man. I’ll see you in the sun again, I promise.”

Hubert slipped back into the main hallway when Thanily whispered, “We’re going to find the other Hresvelgs, right?”

“Of course we are.” Lady Edelgard gave him an order, and he would follow it, but…she did not need to know about this part. There were some things that he had to do.

* * *

Martin and Saphrin von Hresvelg, the crown prince of the Adrestian Empire, had been a proud young man and a dignified lynx daemon. He had been upright and stoic, but kind and gentle with children and his younger siblings. Hubert remembered how he had somehow never lost his patience with the loud and insufferable son of the prime minister. He had been impeccably groomed.

The Martin von Hresvelg in the cell before Hubert and Thanily was little more than a scrap of filthy hair and bruised skin stretched taut over bone, slumped against the wall with chains holding him up and _where the fuck was Saphrin?!_

Hubert fumbled at the lock, fingers shaking. Thanily was already there, moth-shaped, her movements increasingly frantic as she fluttered all around the mutilated prince. “Hubert, I can’t find her, where’s his daemon?!”

Martin looked up at her voice. His eyes were sunken, hollow, _empty._ “...Saphrin?”

Hubert flung open the door and practically fell inside the cell. Martin cowered and whimpered and only when Hubert threw aside the beaked mask did what was left of the crown prince croak, “Please, Saphrin...give me back Saphrin...”

Thanily dove under Hubert’s robes, a rat pressed flat against his racing heart. He clutched her there, sick. Hubert was expecting a corpse. This was worse than a corpse. Corpses couldn’t speak. Corpses couldn’t weakly mutter that they were cold, that they wanted Saphrin, where was Saphrin?

“Saphrin’s gone,” Thanily cried into his chest. “Saphrin’s gone, they took her away, they cut away Martin’s daemon! Why would they do that? Hubert, we have to help him!”

“Thani, there’s only one kind of help I can give.”

They stared at each other. If it had been them, a husk of Hubert shackled to a filthy wall and his beloved Thanily, his heart, who had been stolen away? He knew what he would want, and could only hope that what was left of Martin wanted the same.

Thanily detached herself from Hubert, forced herself into the shape of a lynx, and marched into Martin’s lap. He weakly cried out for Saphrin again, but that was all.

Hubert gasped at the contact, at the feel of Thanily against a body that was not his own. It was...unpleasant, but not the overwhelming wrongness that he had heard rumors of. They could push through this. They had to, for Martin’s need was greater than his own.

Martin had lost weight down here, and he was completely dead to the world. It was all too easy to find the notch where skull met spine, and easier still to slide a knife into that gap.

The prince’s blood ran onto Thanily’s fur. Her form shuddered into that of a fox at the contact of those first hot drops, and Hubert and Thanily both _knew._

Hubert stood, his soul stained crimson, his mind black with rage. So this was the truth of the Insurrection of the Seven. His father and the other ministers grew fat on their treason while the the Hresvelg children, the heirs to the throne, the ones they were sworn to protect, were offered up body and soul to the altar of _monsters_ who slithered in the dark! How dare they? _How dare they?!_

The world outside his rage returned to the sight of cages and the sound of daemons he knew too well. Katarina’s snake, Henrik’s mockingbird, Johanna too young to settle but favoring the jackrabbit. All of them ghostly pale, crying in fright and pain and for their humans, and horribly alone. There was a fourth cage. It was empty. At least Saphrin’s agony had ended alongside Martin’s.

Hubert picked the locks, and the severed daemons warily approached, longing for warmth they would never feel again. Thanily stepped into the cages, forcing herself forward although she wanted to do nothing more than cling to Hubert and flee this place. But they were Hubert and Thanily von Vestra, and they did not forget their vows.

Even if there was only one way left to serve these lost Hresvelgs.

“Would you like me to end your pain?”

They were all so small. Their forms dissolved to golden dust in Thanily’s jaws like they were never solid at all.

A faint shout echoing down the halls, “What do you mean he’s dead?!”

Hubert and Thanily glanced at each other. _”We need to rescue Lady Edelgard.”_ “We need to go.”

Hubert slid the beaked mask over his face and ran back up onto the light, Thanily running alongside him. The previously bored guard was preparing for battle; Hubert incinerated her without breaking his stride. They ran, and they did not stop running until they were back in Hubert’s room. Hubert dove under the covers and held Thanily close, buried his face in the thick blood-stained fur of her neck. 

“They’ll pay for this. All of them.” They, at least, remembered their vows. Hubert and Thanily—who had entered the bowels of the palace as a vampire bat, and left as a red fox—held each other under the covers, and they did not leave for a very long time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Hubert: Doesn't matter. Doesn't change his actions or my judgement of them. My father was a traitor to House Hresvelg and he deserved what he got. That was me protecting something I care about._
> 
> _Hubert and Hanneman’s B support._
> 
> And there you have it.
> 
> I promise, the next one will be fluffier and heartwarming!

**Author's Note:**

> This work is canon with the main story; I will update it bit by bit, although the schedule won't be as regular as the main work!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! Please let me know what you think; I hope I didn't scare anyone off.


End file.
